Shared striatal neurons exhibit context-specific dynamics for internally and externally driven actions.

Overview

1. Department of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA
2. Allen Institute, Allen Institute for Neural Dynamics, Seattle, WA 98109, USA
3. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Departments of Neuroscience and Neurology, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA

Abstract

Animals can initiate movements either in response to external cues or from internal drive, yet how the brain flexibly supports both remains unclear. Disorders such as Parkinson’s disease disrupt these modes differently, suggesting distinct underlying mechanisms. These differences could arise from specialized circuits or from shared neuronal populations that shift their dynamics across contexts. To distinguish between these possibilities, we performed two-photon calcium imaging in the dorsolateral striatum as mice executed the same lever press either spontaneously or in response to a cue. Unsupervised clustering identified neurons modulated during cue, movement, or postaction periods. Critically, the same neurons encoded movement across initiation contexts, but their population dynamics diverged before movement. Both D1- and D2-expressing spiny projection neurons contributed to these dynamics, with D1-SPNs more active at the time of the sensory stimulus. These results show that context shapes neural dynamics within a shared movement-encoding population, revealing a context-generalizable striatal code that supports flexible movement initiation across internal and external drives.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

Datasets cited

• zenodo:16333866, at Zenodo; found in DataCite

Data, code, and materials availability

All data and code needed to evaluate and reproduce the results in the paper are present in the paper and/or the Supplementary Materials. Additional datasets generated and analyzed during the current study, along with code for data analysis and figure production, are available at Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/uploads/16333867). The data are organized in a structured database format on which the analysis code directly operates, enabling full reproduction of the results and figures presented in this study. The deposited dataset includes processed calcium imaging data, behavioral data, and all scripts used for clustering, decoding, and statistical analyses. Materials used in this study are available from the vendors and distributors listed in Materials and Methods. No new materials were generated in this study.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 8 authors, 10 MeSH terms, 4 funders, 45 references.

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This paper

Klee, J. L., Fernando-Peiris, S., Suresh, S., Rodrigues-Vaz, I., Peterka, D. S., Costa, R. M., Athalye, V. R., & Sippy, T. (2026). Shared striatal neurons exhibit context-specific dynamics for internally and externally driven actions. Science advances, 12(31), eaed9386. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aed9386

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